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DNA Test Casts Doubt on Executed Man's Guilt
(Nov. 12) -- DNA tests on a single strand of hair that Texas prosecutors insisted linked Claude Jones to a robbery-murder for which he was executed 10 years ago now reveal that the hair probably came from the murder victim, not the killer. The results raise the possibility that Texas executed an innocent man.
Jones always maintained his innocence in the 1989 murder of liquor store owner Allen Hilzendager. On the eve of his execution in December 2000, his lawyers asked then Gov. George W. Bush to delay the execution to allow for a DNA test on the hair.
But in an apparent mix-up, Bush's staff failed to tell him about Jones' DNA request, and the governor allowed the execution to go ahead the next day. At the time, Bush was mired in the 2000 presidential recount battle against Al Gore. Neither Bush nor his former staffers could be reached for comment.
"I have no doubt that if President Bush had known about the request to do a DNA test of the hair, he would have issued a 30-day stay in this case and Jones would not have been executed," Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that uses DNA to exonerate inmates, told the Houston Chronicle.
The Innocence Project and the Texas Observer, an Austin political journal, pushed for the DNA tests in a three-year court battle. The test results were published on the journal's website Thursday.
Because the DNA tests don't implicate another gunman, they also don't prove Jones' innocence. But they raise serious doubts about his guilt and suggest he was wrongly convicted on faulty evidence. The strand of hair was the only evidence that linked Jones to the crime scene.
"The DNA results prove that testimony about the hair sample on which this entire case rests was just wrong," Scheck told the Observer. "Unreliable forensic science and a completely inadequate post-conviction review process cost Claude Jones his life."
Jones was executed by injection on Dec. 7, 2000. DNA technology didn't exist when he was convicted in 1990 of Hilzendager's murder. The convicted killer's son, Duane Jones, said that his father long maintained his innocence, and that the family now deserves an apology.
"I was 98 percent sure of what he was telling me," Jones told the Chronicle, "but now I believe him 100 percent. He was railroaded. He did not shoot that man. I think not only am I owed an apology, but so is everybody in the whole state of Texas."
Since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States nearly 35 years ago, there's never been a case in which someone has been convicted and executed for a crime and then afterward been proved innocent. Such a case would bolster arguments by death-penalty opponents like Scheck, who argue that the U.S. legal system is flawed and could potentially lead to the execution of an innocent person.
During the trial 20 years ago, prosecutors also outlined Jones' violent criminal past. He was described as a career criminal who spent most of his adult life in prison. While serving time in Kansas, he poured a flammable liquid on his prison cellmate and set him on fire, killing him, The Associated Press reported.
The Texas district attorney who prosecuted Jones' case died earlier this year, but a former sheriff who also worked on the case, Lacy Rogers, told the AP that he believes Jones was guilty -- "without a doubt in my mind."
Hilzendager's family said the same. "I still think he was guilty," Joe Hilzendager, the murder victim's brother, told the AP. "I think they executed the right man."
Jones was 60 when he was put to death, the last inmate to be executed under Bush's time as governor there.
His case isn't the first time new DNA evidence has cast doubt on an execution in Texas, where more inmates are executed than in any other U.S. state. Some 464 prisoners have been put to death there in the past three decades.
A Texas judge is currently considering whether a man executed in 2004 was convicted on the basis of outdated forensic technology, Agence France-Presse reported. Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death for setting a 1991 fire that killed his three daughters, but experts have testified that the evidence used to prove that the fire was arson was flawed.
Jones always maintained his innocence in the 1989 murder of liquor store owner Allen Hilzendager. On the eve of his execution in December 2000, his lawyers asked then Gov. George W. Bush to delay the execution to allow for a DNA test on the hair.
But in an apparent mix-up, Bush's staff failed to tell him about Jones' DNA request, and the governor allowed the execution to go ahead the next day. At the time, Bush was mired in the 2000 presidential recount battle against Al Gore. Neither Bush nor his former staffers could be reached for comment.
"I have no doubt that if President Bush had known about the request to do a DNA test of the hair, he would have issued a 30-day stay in this case and Jones would not have been executed," Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that uses DNA to exonerate inmates, told the Houston Chronicle.
The Innocence Project and the Texas Observer, an Austin political journal, pushed for the DNA tests in a three-year court battle. The test results were published on the journal's website Thursday.
Because the DNA tests don't implicate another gunman, they also don't prove Jones' innocence. But they raise serious doubts about his guilt and suggest he was wrongly convicted on faulty evidence. The strand of hair was the only evidence that linked Jones to the crime scene.
"The DNA results prove that testimony about the hair sample on which this entire case rests was just wrong," Scheck told the Observer. "Unreliable forensic science and a completely inadequate post-conviction review process cost Claude Jones his life."
Jones was executed by injection on Dec. 7, 2000. DNA technology didn't exist when he was convicted in 1990 of Hilzendager's murder. The convicted killer's son, Duane Jones, said that his father long maintained his innocence, and that the family now deserves an apology.
"I was 98 percent sure of what he was telling me," Jones told the Chronicle, "but now I believe him 100 percent. He was railroaded. He did not shoot that man. I think not only am I owed an apology, but so is everybody in the whole state of Texas."
Since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States nearly 35 years ago, there's never been a case in which someone has been convicted and executed for a crime and then afterward been proved innocent. Such a case would bolster arguments by death-penalty opponents like Scheck, who argue that the U.S. legal system is flawed and could potentially lead to the execution of an innocent person.
During the trial 20 years ago, prosecutors also outlined Jones' violent criminal past. He was described as a career criminal who spent most of his adult life in prison. While serving time in Kansas, he poured a flammable liquid on his prison cellmate and set him on fire, killing him, The Associated Press reported.
The Texas district attorney who prosecuted Jones' case died earlier this year, but a former sheriff who also worked on the case, Lacy Rogers, told the AP that he believes Jones was guilty -- "without a doubt in my mind."
Hilzendager's family said the same. "I still think he was guilty," Joe Hilzendager, the murder victim's brother, told the AP. "I think they executed the right man."
Jones was 60 when he was put to death, the last inmate to be executed under Bush's time as governor there.
His case isn't the first time new DNA evidence has cast doubt on an execution in Texas, where more inmates are executed than in any other U.S. state. Some 464 prisoners have been put to death there in the past three decades.
A Texas judge is currently considering whether a man executed in 2004 was convicted on the basis of outdated forensic technology, Agence France-Presse reported. Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death for setting a 1991 fire that killed his three daughters, but experts have testified that the evidence used to prove that the fire was arson was flawed.
Comments
As well as I think criminals would hate it more to be locked up in solitary confinement than die. I can't imagine what that guy was feeling....thinking they're going to kill me and I didn't do it
There's a reason why these stories make you feel bad. Keeping a patient on death row is more expensive than keeping a patient in Gen Pop. Abolish the death penalty.